… X10 owners can’t use it because it’s only available for Android 2.1 and above. Granted this may not be the greatest injustice in human history, but it is pretty annoying and it’s the thin edge of a rather annoying wedge that will grow wider and wider until Sony Ericsson finally do release the 2.1 update for the X10. There are probably more than a few apps that X10 owners can’t take advantage of at the moment, but, what could end up being, the best Twitter client for Android is one app that might very well induce pangs of annoyance that we don’t have 2.1 right now.

Roll on update day …

[via Gizmodo]

The big news story of the week was the introduction of two new features to Sony Ericsson handsets: the eagerly awaited Delay 2.0 and a surprise in the form of Dropped-from-Sale, which might be this year’s killer feature.

When the X10 was announced last year there was much speculation over it’s feature set with some specs not being confirmed until much later i.e. a magnetometer. Well this week the wait was finally over as it was revealed that the X10 will indeed ship with the much anticipated Delay 2.0, the much delayed update to Delay 1.0 first seen with the W960. Sony Ericsson fans were ecstatic at the news with Mr Arthur Arthurson posting “This has made my day! I thought I was going to have to buy the X10 in February now I get the added fun of waiting until March!”

Sony Ericsson weren’t done yet though as they rolled out one of the most exciting features we’ve ever seen: Dropped-from-Sale. It’s a really innovative service that allows Sony Ericsson to announce a new product, build customer interest and then allow the product to be cancelled and frustrate customers. Mr Arthur Arthurson commented “Wow! I can’t believe other manufacturers aren’t doing this. Just the other day I was interested in buying an X2 and now thanks to Dropped-from-Sale I’m really frustrated. How cool is that?!” Initially Dropped-from-Sale will only ship with the X2, but many wonder whether Sony Ericsson might upgrade the X10’s Delayed 2.0 to full Dropped-from-Sale.

This week also saw the appearance of two new handsets from Sony Ericsson. Let’s take a look at them:

Kanna will be a Symbian 5th series device and is very similar to Kurara, the previously seen HD recording Symbian device from SE. The main difference is that Kanna features a slide out QWERTY keyboard. SE have wisely waited until their competition tired themselves out releasing qwerty handsets like the BL3310, BL3410, and KS360 before releasing their own. This way it has a better chance to sell you see than if SE were actually leading the trend. Also the choice of Symbian 5th Edition is quite shrewd because whilst all the buzz is about Android there must still be some people who want to pretend they’re using a Nokia when they’re not. As one customer, a Mr Arthur Arthurson, pointed out “Thank goodness this comes behind the trend, nothing puts me off more than buying a handset that everyone is talking about”.

The other new handset this week was Robyn, a smaller version of the X10. It’s unknown whether Robyn will ship with Delay 2.0 like it’s big sister, but we can’t imagine SE would leave it out. It’s expected to be announced next month at the MWC and with it’s similarity to the X10 some are wondering if they will be able tell them apart. Mr Arthur Arthurson offered the following advice “Hire an ant with a pedometer to walk across both phones so you can accurately measure them”.

That’s all for this week folks! Moooooooo!

I’d like to introduce something new for you, it’s “Mik’s Impatient Opinions”. Think of this as a review source but in a rather different way to the normal, in depth reviews you’re used to. After all there’s plenty of other people already doing that and I neither see the point or can really be bothered doing the same thing!

So instead I’m going to give you something a little more personal. I’m typically short on patience, quick to form opinions and quick to condemn. I think in this way I can cut to the chase and tell you what you really need to know in an efficient and possibly entertaining way though I expect some things I write may not be what fanboys want to hear.

I won’t be doing detailed comparisons, I don’t intend on spending hours taking photographs and I won’t be covering massive amounts of handsets but I will try to use my own style to highlight things that will affect your every day user experience with a device or application etc.

So keep a look out for my first article, especially if you’re considering a Satio, and I hope you enjoy what I write for you.

Cheers,

Mik

The copy/paste-strategy

Sony Ericsson changed its product strategy a few years ago. The company saw huge advantages of making use of the same hardware and software platforms with only few minor changes. Initially, the strategy worked out very well – probably because it was still of limited use.
Sony Ericsson announced the rather amazing K750 back in very early March 2005. The K750 is one of Sony Ericsson’s most innovative phones ever, period. It was such an immense update from K700, and the camera – which was the most interesting feature about it – was built upon the camera of the S700, and greatly enhanced. I doubt it came as a surprise for K750 users when it was announced the best camera phone of the year. The K750 wasn’t one to miss, and sales surpassed all expectations.

At the same day the K750 was announced, Sony Ericsson also announced another very similar phone, which featured the same stunning camera features, while also bringing the Sony Walkman brand into the mobile phone market. The W800 was born.

This is where Sony Ericsson’s now heavily used segmentation has its roots, and it wasn’t long until another Sony Ericsson trend arose. About nine months after the announcement of the W800, Sony Ericsson announced the W810 – a slightly updated W800 with a few hardware upgrades, such as adding quad-band GSM and EDGE functionality rather than tri-band only, and a slightly updated user interface, not to mention the arguably nicer design. And that was about it… Even though not much had changed compared to W800, the W810 sold very well, and Sony Ericsson managed to keep up the hype about their products, for now at least.

A month after the announcement of W810, Sony Ericsson announced the M600. And just about a week after that, the W950 was announced. Both phones were built on the exact same platform with the exact same operating system, with only minor differences to each. The M600 featured a full keyboard, whilst the W950 featured a rather regular keypad. It was obvious that Sony Ericsson had just taken its product segmentation to the next level with the M600 being a business phone, and the W950 being a music phone, although they were 99 percent the same. Have a look at the more recent P1 and W960 smart phones – the story continued.

Later that month, the K800 was announced. This was the successor of K750, and to make it even more obvious that this phone was “a camera”, Sony Ericsson hooked up with its Japanese parent company and branded it the very first Cyber-shot phone. Back then, Sony Ericsson said that only the best digital cameras would wear the Cyber-shot brand, and at the same time promised that the quality of the photos would be beyond the usual. Do you think they’d still be proud to say that about the C902 and K850 today? Personally, I doubt it when it comes to these two in particular as they’re short on quality compared to other market offerings, but I wouldn’t doubt for a second, that they’ll be prouder than ever to say it about the C905.

So, the K800 brought along some hardware upgrades and an entirely new software platform. It took a whole year for Sony Ericsson to announce its newest Cyber-shot flagship, which – in most cases – was no different than the K800. Once again, Sony Ericsson had added the quad-band GSM and EDGE functionality, slightly updated the software, and changed the design to a more appealing one.

By now, Sony Ericsson was slowly starting to fall behind, and had now made it pretty clear to most that they weren’t going to change this “hardware/software swap” trend – and well, they didn’t. As far as I can tell, the portfolio included more than forty of these phones from about 2005 to now. These are:

C902, D750, G502, K310, K320, K530, K550, K630, K750, K770, K790, K800, K810, M600, P1, S302, S500, T250, T270, T280, T650, T700, V640, W300, W302, W550, W580, W600, W610, W660, W700, W710, W800, W810, W890, W902, W950, W960, Z530, Z555, Z710, Z750, Z770, and Z780.

I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve missed some, or if some of you disagree with me, but fact is that the above mentioned phones are each very similar to at least one or more of the other mentioned phones.

Cutting down on the high-end products

Because of Sony Ericsson’s almost endless line of similar phones, many high-end consumers have left the company for others. Although it is not the only reason for Sony Ericsson’s decreasing phone ASP (average selling price), this has without doubt been one of them.

Sony Ericsson used to be a manufacturer delivering very high-end offerings with basically no comprises on features or size. Lately they haven’t been up for the challenge of keeping up with the game, and were late at incorporating newer, more advanced features into their phone portfolio. Here we’re talking about features such as GPS and WLAN. Sony Ericsson’s portfolio is still very limited when it comes to phones with these features, and while most of the new smart phones feature WLAN connectivity, none of them include a built-in GPS unit. If we’re going to take a look at the feature phones, it’s rather clear that only a few feature a built-in GPS unit, and only one – for now – does also feature built-in WLAN.

And when it comes to features, how many of Sony Ericsson’s latest phones would you say have brought anything new to the table? Not a whole lot of them, I guess, and the stuff that was brought to the table is nowhere near being as innovative as it had been just a few years ago. Take the recently announced T700 as an example – it brings absolutely nothing new to the market, and W890, which seems like the better and cheaper choice, is already on the market and has been for some time. The only thing new about the T700 is its design, and that’s what Sony Ericsson wants people to buy it for. In my opinion, that’s no way to run a company – to create products and hope that they’re bought based on their looks rather than functionality and features. Have a look on over at Motorola in USA, and you’ll know what I mean.

Will this change? Yes, and as a matter of fact it is currently changing, and started changing when Miles Flint gave his chair to the current President, Hideki Komiyama. Sure, it’s taken almost a year now, but I don’t think it’ll be that much longer now. Hideki has made it clear that the situation wouldn’t be much changed in Q3, but that they’re going all in on the fourth quarter of the year, and I must admit that they’ve got a strong line-up for the mass market, while still not forgetting all about the business segment.

Branding – just for the sake of it?

Sony Ericsson has currently got two Sony brands to go on segmented Sony Ericsson products; the Cyber-shot brand, and the Walkman brand. The use of the brands is one of the things Hideki Komiyama has to do something about.

At the moment, Sony Ericsson’s portfolio includes a total of nine Cyber-shot branded phones, from the low-end K550 to the high-end C905. Sony Ericsson’s portfolio also includes no less than 26 Walkman branded music phones, again from the low-end ones, such as W200 and W300, to the high-end ones, such as W902, W960 and W980.

Seeing there is such a great difference in these products varying from the very cheap end of the line-up to the more expensive ones, how is it that even the very low-end phones can wear the same brand of quality as the high-end ones? Well, it’s nothing but a marketing gig.

I am personally finding it very hard to believe that the W200 really “deserves” this Walkman quality brand. In my opinion, it was merely because the Walkman range didn’t include any really cheap offerings, so they just smashed on the Walkman brand, and went on hoping no one would notice. The same goes for the Cyber-shot range and many of the phones in it, especially the K550. They can’t seriously think that this phone is going to replace a digital compact camera. If so, they’re barking mad! Once again, this was just to make the range a bit more complete. What’s worse is that the K550’s Walkman copy, the W610, is actually a better camera phone than K550, because of the – in my opinion – horrific post-processing of the Cyber-shot camera software. Believe it or not, the difference is there, and it is evident.
The same thing goes for the Cyber-shot branded K770 and its generic sibling, the T650. Although the difference is less noticeable in this case, mainly because the camera module has been replaced for an excellent Samsung module, it should be clear to most that – up until now – the branding has been done just for the sake of it. By the way, the T650 remains one of Sony Ericsson’s best camera phones in terms of quality – even without the wonderful Cyber-shot brand.

Some will wonder why I’m writing “up until now”. This is mainly because Sony Ericsson recently announced the C905, that can actually replace a low/mid-end digital compact camera, and because most Walkman phones are actually decent music phones, although the majority are still victims of Sony Ericsson’s heavy segmentation, meaning the cameras are just about worthless in most cases.

Discouraging financial results

I don’t know about you, but I loved every single bit of the Q2 financial results, and I even laughed when I read the part about the huge profit drop. The results were indeed very discouraging, and I’m hopeful that they were discouraging to such a degree that it opened Sony Ericsson’s eyes.

The operating income turned negative. I’m most certain this means they’ve manufactured too many phones that simply didn’t sell. I blame a large part of this problem on the amount of similar phones, and Sony Ericsson’s excessive software modifications for each of its two Sony brands, especially when it’s far from up to the level it should be.

One thing I loved about the financial results is that Sony Ericsson claims that the market is proving challenging. I think someone needs a wakeup call, ASAP! It really can’t be that hard to understand that the market doesn’t want three different variants of each phone, where the only difference is the branding and price. In addition to that, it really can’t be that hard to understand that the expenses will triple when manufacturing and marketing three similar phones instead of just one.

Conclusion

So, is it really as bad as it sounds? Well, partially. So far I’ve only mentioned the bad stuff and how it went bad. Sony Ericsson has come up with some fabulous phones recently, including the C905, G700, G900 and X1. These represent the very best Sony Ericsson has to offer, and this golden league will soon welcome a few very much needed additions.

The fact that Sony Ericsson’s sales didn’t go down substantially also means that there are still many people out there that do want to buy Sony Ericsson products. Lately, Sony Ericsson’s strategy just hasn’t been any profitable, mainly because the number of similar phones has been growing a lot.

Another factor that goes to prove that Sony Ericsson knows about their problems is the fact that about 2,000 employees are to be sacked. How can this possibly be a good thing, you ask? Well, Sony Ericsson’s portfolio has been flooded by – let’s just call them copy/paste phones – and lots of them! It’s been reported that Sony Ericsson had expanded its portfolio by about fifteen mobile phones year on year, and I suspect the majority are copy/paste phones. For each phone a massive crew is needed of more than 100 employees. Yes, that’s for each phone, even if they’ve been through the photocopier! That means the majority of the 2,000 employees that are to be sacked could come from the development and marketing of copy/paste phones. Official spokespeople have even said that a great part of the cuts will be in Sweden, which adds up perfectly to the above mentioned theory.
But wait, what about the rest? Well, it’s not exactly unusual for a company with such an immense profit drop to lay off a number of employees, and I guess that’s also the reason in Sony Ericsson’s case.

I’ll leave you with that, and wrap up this rant. It’s not all bad, and things are (slowly) turning, although it’ll definitely take some time. If you’re willing to wait, you should do it. If not – well, you might want to reconsider, and keep in mind that it really isn’t as bad as it looks, although it might sound harsh and feel like the most stupid thing in the world to support Sony Ericsson at times.

Paris was going to be Sony Ericsson’s first slider in the P-series line-up. While it was partly based on old hardware, Sony Ericsson had made several software enhancements that would significantly speed up the phone. In addition to this, the Paris would have been based on UIQ 3.3. Anyway, what I wanted to show in this blog post was that Sony Ericsson realized that the business segment no longer has to be connected to boring colour schemes. It can be black and grey while still looking like a million bucks! I’ve known about the three colour variants for Paris (black/blue, silver/red, and black/orange) in about two months now, and this was one of the things that I liked about it – they’re trying to break the habit of “one colour variant” business & enterprise phones. Let’s hope they’ll keep it up in upcoming S60-based business phones.

Beibei was the mainstream UIQ 3.3-based smart phone that was never announced either. Beibei would – in my opinion – have been the better of the two. It brought along lots of innovation and new-thinking, one being the way you’d control the device with the scroll wheel. Just like Paris, Beibei would have shown up in three colour variants; black, black/blue and the white/red one. I’m hoping to get my hands on one, and I’ll be sure to tell you all about it if I succeed!

Ok, now on to the new products – they’re divided into 3 groups for different audiences as seen below.

The first group consists of two entry models, the J132 and the K330. Both are low-end phones with all basic phone features like phone book, torch, (radio) alarm, and the K330 also supports Bluetooth. A VGA-camera with video recording up to 12 minutes is also present and so is Java support.
The J132 comes in Night black and Heaven blue, K330 in Gold on black and Green on black.

Also in this group are the three new Bluetooth headsets HBH-PV715, PV720, PV740.

For the PV-720 you can buy additional style-up covers, so you can personalize it.

The next group contains the F305 – F being for fun. This phone is all about fun and entertainment, it’s equipped with a motion sensor, dedicated game buttons and even stereo speakers.  The phone also has a M2 memory card slot, 2 mega pixel camera and three pre-installed games; Bowling, Bass fishing and Jockey. Additionally, 50 games by Gameloft will be available to download via Playnow. You can get the phone in two colours, Polar white and Mystic black. Along with this phone comes 2 style-up covers and additional the CPP-100 for an extra power boost.

The last group was all about making pictures and sharing them – this includes the S302 and the C905.
The S306 is a 2 mega pixel camera phone with a smooth design and a glossy finish. This phone comes in two colour variants – Crystal  blue and Thunder grey.
And now what you have all been waiting for – the one and only C905. This is basically a camera with phone functionality! It’s so amazing with its 8 mea pixel camera and the big sensor, this is really worth buying. This is the first Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot in the slider form factor, but SE did this on purpose. Their goal as to make a phone that looks like a camera instead of a phone, and to do this they used a metal casing that feels really solid and is a little bit heavier than what we’ve seen in previous Cyber-shot phones.

Also announced were the MD400(g), the CBC-100 battery charger/adapter and the ITC-60 TV out cable for viewing your C905 photos on your TV set.

After the slideshow it was time for lunch, meaning we could finally play with these new models! My personal opinion about the phones;

• J132 and K330 – both really annoying without the back key.
• F305 – looks good and it’s surprisingly small. But the games are not that special.
• S302 – great cam for a 2mega pixel phone still in development.
• C905 – damn, this phone is good! It’s like the phone K850 never became and the UI is real fast.
• Also got my hands on the X1 and its user interface has been speeded up a lot, too.

By Thomas Hondema aka Reversedhex.

BeiBei is one of the unannounced smart phones from Sony Ericsson that is most likely to use UIQ 3.3. Lots of signs point to this as being the platform used.

G700 and G900’s operating system and platform (UIQ 3.0) includes parts that are very much like BeiBei’s platform, so it is not unthinkable that a future firmware update could bring the UIQ 3.3 platform to these two phones (maybe also P1 and W960?).

I tested out a beta version of UIQ 3.3 yesterday and it generally seemed pretty stable with a few exceptions. Opera Mobile 9.5 crashed time after time and Bluetooth as well as WLAN wouldn’t work (hardware problem?). Other than that I am really liking the UIQ dashboard and HTML widgets. It’s a fun feature that’ll work great!

That’s it for now. Will report back when I hear something new

This was followed up by Mr Kaidesoja questioning Sony Ericsson’s ability to produce a gaming handset: “The real question is how do they [Sony Ericsson] do it? Can they create a link between the PSP games and a phone? Can they do the multiplayer and online stuff? We’ve been doing this for two years and it hasn’t been easy.”

They are certainly interesting comments for Nokia’s head of gaming to make in public. One obvious interpretation would be that Nokia see Sony Ericsson as the manufacturer best placed to release a gaming handset, no doubt parent Sony’s expertise in the field and the PlayStation brand having much to do withsuch a perception.

The other point that one may infer from the comments is that Nokia take the idea of a possible PlayStation handset seriously enough to publicly comment on it. Of course that isn’t proof that such a handset will come to fruition, but it will no doubt add fuel to the rumour conflagration that is blazing brightly around the idea of a PlayStation handset.

Pocket Gamer via Engadget

Ah the T68i … my favourite handset. Why discuss a seven year old handset, I hear you ask? Why not? The T68i was a pioneer in its day, introducing some of the features we now take for granted, and as a result it was ahead of its time. Even today the T68i is still a viable choice as a handset in my opinion.

From a technical standpoint the T68i was a trailblazer in its day. Not only was it the first handset to sport a colour screen (unless you count the Ericsson T68), it was also the king of connectivity. Not only did it have the standard features of its day; IrDA and WAP, it also supported Bluetooth, GPRS, e-mail, and, despite not having an inbuilt camera, MMS. That might not sound like an impressive feature list in 2008, but in 2001 that was rather impressive. The T68 had been advertised as a games playing mobile and the T68i kept that feature. The games look dated now, but in its heyday the T68i could boast games that were controlled using a joystick on a colour screen. An attachable camera was released for the T68i – a big step in those days given that mobile phones were, in general, still very much in the ‘talk and text’ stage.

In terms of design, the handset was an Ericsson handset and bears little resemblance to present day Sony Ericsson handsets. The design is elegant, yet simple; gently curving lines and an absence of ‘trendy’ design elements that afflict some modern handsets. I’m not sure whether it was the metallic blue surrounding the screen or the small size of the handset (it was considered small in 2001), but there was a certain feeling of advanced technological capability from the T68i. It didn’t look like a handset that was designed for just calls and texts.

The T68i’s biggest weakness was its slow UI. Simply put, the UI was fine as long as one went through it at a normal pace, but if you were trying to get something done in a hurry it could get frustrating. It’s somewhat ironic that some recent complaints about UIQ, the UI Sony Ericsson uses for its smartphones, have centred around the same issue.

When I compare the T68i with some of today’s handsets I can’t help but choose the T68i. Of course it is completely outclassed, in terms of features, by even today’s mid-range handsets, let alone high-end handsets, but despite that it still offers enough, even after seven years, for me to consider using it as my main handset. It might not do everything my N95 (… and yet he writes for a Sony Ericsson blog, Michell) does, but there is something about the T68i that I find enduring. It might have lost its technological superiority to other handsets, but, like a fine wine, it gets better with age. It’s contemporary simplicity, far from being a drawback, is an advantage in my opinion. It retains just enough to be technically useful whilst lacking just enough to make it appealing to those looking for something that reminds them of a simpler time.